Bits and Pieces
by Obiwanlivesforever
Summary: Brutal. Horrible. Miserable. Unsurvivable. All words with which to describe the Hunger Games. Here are more of them. Various one-shots based off the Brutal Series by Number One Fan of Journey; written for the Creatively-Titled Contest on the Brutal Death Denial Support Group Forums. Features AU versions of Hetalia characters, OC nations, and Hunger Games OCs.
1. Jewel

**Hello, all, and welcome to my newest FanFiction. This is meant to be a companion piece of sorts to Number One Fan of Journey's **_**Brutal **_**crossovers between Hunger Games and Hetalia: Axis Powers (and, as such, contains MAJOR spoilers). It was inspired by the "Creatively-Titled Contest" on the Brutal forums and will consist of one-shots based on a given prompt and related to the series. Most of these will still make sense if you haven't read the FanFic series they're based off of, but I'd highly recommend looking into it first. **

**I can't say how regularly I'll be updating this, seeing as I have (soon to be) two multichapter FanFictions on the go. The entries will vary in tense and POV. Also, while the oneshots are meant to be between 500 and 1000 words, they may go slightly over or under the limit depending on how long I felt they should be. **

**Please note that I do not own Hunger Games, Hetalia: Axis Powers, or the Brutal Series, nor is this intended to be part of the Brutal canon. They're just drabbles that may or may not be part of my own personal headcanon. **

**I hope you enjoy!**

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**Challenge:** material challenge

**Prompt: **jewel

**Fic(s) involved: **_Miserable, _brief mention of _Horrible_

**Main character (and Hetalia counterpart): **Osso Torya, District 1 (Austria)

**Other characters (and Hetalia counterparts): **brief mention of OC family members; mention of Magya Garrison, District 2 (Hungary); mention of Rome Gnaeus, District 1 (Ancient Rome)

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They call him the jewel of the Toryas from the day he is born, and why should they not? He is the eldest son of the eldest son, heir to a fortune gouged by lesser men from the deep caverns of the earth. The treasures from which they have long profited are memorialized in the names of his aunts and uncles and cousins – names like Sapphire and Garnet and Sardonyx. The walls of his childhood are encrusted in gems, and in them he sees the reflection of his own face, polished and precious and proud.

On his 11th birthday the boy receives a ruby-encrusted sword, ordered specially from the Capitol by his father. It is an exact replica of the weapon which brought District 1 victory in that year's Hunger Games. The children of the neighborhood, those whom he has been raised to regard with slanted eye and upturned nose, gawk in envy.

The sword is placed high on a shelf, to sit and be admired and collect dust. Its owner ignores it and heads to the parlor, from which his music swells throughout the house.

By the time the young man is in his teens, the whispers flitting about high society begin to contain his name. His family is no stranger to rumors. As the wealthiest family in the District, they can and have endured them. These are no mere murmurs, however – they are taunts, barbed and poisonous. Accusatory. They hiss of how the pride of the Toryas does nothing but sit all day at the piano, eating fine food and wearing fine clothes. They mention the Gnaeus boy, heir of a rival family, who lost his life not long ago in the name of the District's honor. The old jewels, those thrones of wealth upon which the Toryas have sat for generations, no longer uphold the family reputation. A new jewel is needed, one of ferocity and fire.

His father and mother take him aside to explain. They tell him he can no longer be like that sword, which sits in splendor but does little else. He must make his own name, for the good of the family and the District. The young man understands what must be done and thinks little of it. He is used to servants bowing, food arriving on trays, crystals glittering while music flows. He cannot conceive of anything different.

The jewels adorn his chest as he lies on the arena floor on the final night of the Games. Big, brilliant rubies, they blossom from the spot where the cleaver entered his stomach and spill onto the grass around him. The girl beside him calls his name; squeezes his hand; refuses to abandon her ally. He knows that it is all in vain. Nothing else can be done but wonder what his parents think now, or whether or not they are watching at all, as the jewel of the Torya family tarnishes and fades.


	2. Blood

**Note: please keep in mind that characters' views do NOT necessarily echo my own. I write them the way they are for the purpose of storytelling and character development, not to convey an agenda or put down certain groups. I hope the content of this chapter isn't too offensive.**

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**Challenge:** Journey's challenge

**Prompt: **blood

**Fic(s) involved: **_Brutal_

**Main character (and Hetalia counterpart): **an unnamed girl from District 10 (OC)

**Other characters (and Hetalia counterparts): **Eudocia Conc, District 10 (OC), OC family members

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I'm not a bad person.

I've just always adhered to a certain philosophy. Call it survival of the fittest, if you'd like. It's a necessary belief to get ahead in District Ten. Strength merits success. Weakness does not. Weakness hinders strength, snatching at it like claws, draining it of its life and vigour. I've seen healthy people wither away after spending too long at a loved one's deathbed, surrendering themselves to the disease that lingers in the blood. A stain that they won't let be washed away.

When I was a girl, still of reaping age, I loved a boy whose younger sister suffered from asthma. They were the descendants of a Victor from the early years, before the Games changed from punishment to celebration and their survivors were showered with riches. Whatever the man had won could not blot out his granddaughter's iniquity. I'd seen the extremes to which the family went to keep her alive. Don't think I can't recall the hours at which they'd woken to herd the cattle, the threadbare touch of the boy's clothes, the questions I'd dared ask under cover of night.

"Don't you ever wonder what it would be like if you didn't have to work two shifts? I mean, if it wasn't for…" How to phrase it without offending? "…Eudocia's – condition?"

"Well, I don't know." It was there, that resentment, restrained by a barrier of brotherly love. "Sure it would be easier, yeah, but-"

"But what?" An indignant rise in my voice. "You wouldn't have to work 'til one in the morning? You'd be able to afford a decent pair of shoes? We'd have time, _real_ time, to spend together?"

"But she's my sister."

She was his weakness; his bloodstain; she infected the entire family. It wasn't fair.

"Name, miss?"

"Eudocia Conc, sir."

The official's brows furrowed, eyes darting over a list. He gave a harsh laugh.

"Sure, and I'm our esteemed President. I've been in this position long enough to know that girl never comes outside of the house."

"Well, that's it, sir. I'm taking these out for her, as a favor. Since she can't come here herself."

A sigh. "All right, then. How many will it be?"

My mind reeled. How many would help; how many would hinder; how many would cleanse the tainted blood?

"Ten tesserae, sir."

It never guaranteed anything. As far as I knew, the next victim could have been the usual eighteen-year-old field hand; the sturdy, weathered type who I'd want to survive solely because she deserved it. But it was Eudocia Conc's name that the escort read out that year, and her face that lit up the sky one week later.

My time with the boy didn't last long after that. I never told him what I'd done, but could not escape the thought that he knew. It was at his request, after all, that I'd gone to sign him up for more tesserae while he watched the cattle. He only had to recall our moonlit conversations to guess I'd offered his sister's name in his place.

In the end, though, I'd done the right thing. Wash out the stain, and everything returns to how it should be. Everybody gets what they deserve. The last time he spoke to me, his family was faring better. They'd purchased another five cattle. The hole in the roof was fixed. The boy was wearing new shoes.

She didn't suffer long in the arena. The tribute who ended her life walked away with unbloodied hands. Not a drop spilt.

Again, a fair result. That stain is mine to bear.


	3. Gold

**I experimented with a more casual style for Amantius' voice here. I wanted to give him a little bit of depth and sympathy while still keeping him the jerk he is in canon. This goes off a little headcanon of mine regarding the nature of Anglynn's disorder. Like with the last chapter, it doesn't reflect my views, and I hope it doesn't offend anybody. **

**Also, there's quite a bit of swearing. I just couldn't find a way to make Amantius' POV work with tame language. Sorry, Journey. **

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**Challenge:** material challenge

**Prompt: **gold

**Fic(s) involved: **_Unsurvivable_

**Main character (and Hetalia counterpart): **Amantius Redulite, District 2 (Wales OC)

**Other characters (and Hetalia counterparts): **Anglynn Redulite, District 2 (Fem!England); brief mention of Cisca Lemieux, District 1 (Fem!France); brief mention of OC family members

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I know what you're thinking. Yeah, you, sitting comfily behind your TV watching us struggle across the ice. I'm not talking about the bastards in the Capitol here. Or anyone from One or Four, trying to convince themselves this isn't going to be another District Two victory. No, I'm talking to every hypocrite in Panem who wants their own pathetic tributes to win but looks down on those of us who actually have what it takes to do so.

Like I said before, I know what's going through your heads. _Big stupid brute from Two, learned to swing an axe before he could spell his own name. What does some Capitolian lapdog know about us?_ Well, I'll tell you what. I know you're sitting there, shaking your heads, wondering how in the name of our beloved President someone can care so little about losing their own sister. You lean over the screen, scanning my face for any hint of emotion over the latest cannon. Like you think you're going to find some hidden heart of gold.

Good luck with that.

Truthfully, I've never seen the value of a so-called golden heart. Sure, it sounds cute if you're under the age of five, but what is gold really? Soft, malleable stuff. Like that chick from One – not bad to look at, but otherwise completely useless. If I broke down sobbing over everyone who died here – even my own kin – I'd have about five minutes before someone lobbed off my head. Harsh? Maybe. But true.

_That's awful_, you say._ Don't you even care a bit for her, deep down?_ I'd say that's the wrong question. The right question is, _have_ I evercared about her?

Of course I have. What kind of kid is born hating their own sister?

I guess you could say I wasn't crazy about her at first. Heck, I was one when she was born. I didn't even know what a sister was. And when your sole experience with siblings is being picked on by your older ones, you return the favor to anyone who can't fight back. But by the time I grew up enough to appreciate having her around, she grew up enough for our parents to realize something was wrong. She wasn't like the rest of us. Talked to herself. Talked to people who weren't there. Talked to the stuffed green rabbit I gave her for her seventh birthday. That scared me. I ripped the freakish thing in half in front of her to make her stop. She cried. I didn't regret it.

It turns out I wasn't the only one who was worried. Our parents were, too. People like her don't last long in a district like ours. Any sort of soft-heartedness is generally wrung out of you long before you're old enough to enter the training facility; that's just the way things are. She was ten years old and talking to fairies and unicorns and whatever other crap she could come up with. The doctors called it some fancy word. The rest of us called it messed-up. It wasn't right, the way she was. It wasn't normal. A little flicker of gold in a district meant to be solid grey.

Mom and dad didn't want her to be taken away like the others labelled 'feeble-minded'. I guess I didn't, either. They begged and bargained, struck up all sorts of deals with local peacekeepers. Threw her headlong into the training system; tried to crush it out of her. The harder we pushed, the tighter she clung to her delusions. But at least this way, the higher-ups figured, she had some place to channel her eccentricity. Better to occupy her with serving the Capitol than set her free to cause havoc in the streets.

The longer this went on, the more I came to accept that she wasn't getting out of this alive. Volunteering obviously wasn't an option for her. But she had no future outside of the training program, either. She wasn't fit to take up an occupation as a peacekeeper or trainer. Nobody wanted someone like her in the mines. And leaving her idle to drain the district's supplies would most likely earn her a bullet in the head. One way or another, I was going to lose my sister. All I could do was prepare for the inevitable.

Bit by bit, I chipped away any remaining traces of gold from my heart, fortifying myself with the stone beneath. No sense in cherishing what you can't keep. The only gold I would seek from then on was that of Victory – of survival, fame, and the wealth it promised. The gold all young Careers are taught to strive for.

I still don't know why she volunteered. Maybe she finally realized that she didn't have anywhere else to go. The trainers must have figured if she wanted to risk getting killed, let her go for it. Just force the strongest trainee to volunteer that year, and District Two's chances of a Victory would stay secure.

Of course, the strongest trainee just happened to be me.

I'm not sure if I had any love left for her at that point. What I do know is that it was crushed out, irreversibly, when her name was read from the slip. Every trivial matter has to be blotted out in the pursuit of victory. She was just another one of them.

So that's why you're seeing me here, scouring this wasteland for more victims when my sister hasn't even been dead an hour. The fact of the matter is, I lost her long before that. And you can judge me all you want for having the guts to stand what none of your precious little weakling tributes could, but it won't mean a damn thing when I'm the last one standing. I'll have the gold I've always sought – and this time, no one will take it away from me.


	4. Hearing

**Totally went over my 1,000 word limit with this one. I regret nothing. **

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**Challenge:** sense challenge

**Prompt: **hearing

**Fic(s) involved: **_Brutal_

**Main character (and Hetalia counterpart): **Austria Edel, District 8 (Austria)

**Other characters (and Hetalia counterparts): **Veta Ungar, District 8 (Hungary), Woof, District 8 mentor (canon Hunger Games character), implied mention of Gil Prus, District 10 (Prussia)

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It has been said that, as the human body succumbs to death, the last sense to expire is hearing.

Austria Edel hopes that is true.

A twig snaps, loud and clear as a gunshot in the jungle's silence. The crackling of its brethren and a rushed staccato of footsteps signal the presence of an intruder.

What occurs next is in almost complete silence, but should it be expressed in sound, Austria feels it would be nothing less than a violent sforzando. The cold metal bites at his throat, swift and unforgiving as the conductor's baton extinguishing an unworthy piece.

Almost at once, blackness rushes to obscure his vision, but his other sense – that ally which singled out tunes amidst the babble of the orphanage, which guided the piece he played on the day he met Veta, which numbed in shock at the calling of both their names – has not yet abandoned him. He hears a sickening crunch as their assailant is incapacitated, then a thud and another flurry of footsteps. The piece proceeds at too swift a tempo; losing his balance, he begins to fall. A familiar voice cries out as gentle arms interrupt his descent.

"H-Hey! Are you okay? What…"

He grasps at a breath, but it comes out ragged and searing with pain. How cruelly ironic, that the musician should be eliminated by the loss of his most fundamental instrument.

"A-Austria! H-Hang on, okay?"

If only he could speak, he thinks. There is so much he still has to tell her. So much that needs, now more than ever, to be said.

Memories of his last conversation with his mentor, the night before the Games, sweep through his mind.

"_Have you thought any more about-" Woof's gaze dropped uncomfortably to the ground. The gesture was unnecessary; Austria already knew what the older man was talking about. The topic had not left his mind since the moment of the reaping. _

"_About how either myself or my fiancée will be dead in a month?" The harshness in his own tone surprised him. Attempting to release some of the tension – a laughably futile thought, really – he exhaled. "Veta's still convinced she's going to bring the both of us through somehow. I know that's just false hope. If the Capitol had heart enough to be swayed by a love story, they wouldn't have created the Games in the first place." _

He had known all along that he wasn't going to make it out of the arena. As hard as he had tried for the both of them, his four in training had spelt his doom. Veta had always been the optimist; he, the realist. Even now, as he felt himself pulled upright and leaned against the rough bark of a tree, he both admired and cursed her determination. _There's nothing you can do. Don't hurt yourself by dragging this out longer than it needs to be. _

Her voice remerges through the descending gloom, and what pains him more than anything is how clearly he can hear her, his _Veta, _breaking amidst the frantic tears.

"_I'll give you some time alone," said his mentor, abandoning the pretense that a heart-to-heart farewell would do anything but heighten the pain of the next day. The sliver of light from the adjacent room vanished as he closed the door. "Some time to think about what we discussed." _

_It had been Woof's plan for Austria to leave Veta some final message, in case he should perish without being able to say his goodbyes. More than that, Austria felt, it must be something she could hold to in the days afterward, so that his chapter in the pages of her life would not only be one of grief. For he was certain, both objectively and emotionally, that she was going to survive these dark days. She was strong, she was brave, she was everything that he only wished he could be. And, as painful as the thought was, she had only him to weigh her down. Without him there, nothing could stand between her and victory._

_Trying not to dwell too deeply on the implications of that thought, the young musician turned to the papers stacked upon his bedside table. What to write? What could possibly make up for all they had suffered; all they had yet to suffer? He had always been a person of few words, especially as a boy. The orphanage had not lent itself to many interesting topics of conversation. Not even Veta had brought him fully out of his shell. _

_Shakily, his thin, fussy handwriting began to edge along the page. _

"_My dearest Veta,_

_If you are reading this, it means that I am dead."_

_He scratched this out in disgust. She would know very well what had happened to him by the time she read the letter. Why be so cruel as to remind her? _

_No, he would have to try again._

"_To my dear fiancée,_

_I am grievously sorry I cannot be by your side. It pains my heart to write these words, for they mean we shall never be together, but with them comes the joy of knowing you are safe."_

_How very like him! How typical, to throw together fancy words in the hopes that their product might have more significance than its parts. This sort of formality would do nothing to ease Veta's pain. She had found his affected speech amusing, but not meaningful. It was not the sort of thing that had first drawn her to him…_

_He trailed his gaze over his ebony writing, the ivory page, and, in a surge of understanding, he knew what he would do. _

_Woof had dragged the keyboard into Austria's bedroom to prevent him from going mad during the long, sleepless nights. He had shown him how to record one's performances and even how to transfer the files to the pianos in the tribute train. The young musician had taken interest, but not until now had he realized just what a blessing the gift was. _

_Spreading out his hands and closing his eyes, he surrendered to emotion. What swept through him and into the music was the very story of their love. The gentle, tinkling strands of its beginning slowly melded into harmony; two separate souls intertwining as one. They rose, as an amorous crescendo, before dying in abrupt silence. Into the next section he poured all that had threatened to overwhelm him throughout the past week – shock, fear, grief, love, passion, rage. Everything built to a final fortepiano, more powerful and terrible than the first. Then, from the deafening silence, climbed one of the initial melodies, repeated with sadness and yet undeniable strength. Veta, alive and unconquered, just as he hoped for her to be…_

Darkness has completely overtaken his sight now, and he can barely feel her hands against his shoulders. Even his hearing is beginning to fade. A thrill of fear goes over him, not only for her, but – he doesn't believe it to be selfish – for himself, as well. What lies beyond this? He's not sure what he believes. They'd never discussed it much. The prospect of their future, so near and bright and full of blessings, had seemed much more important than life's eventual decrescendo.

He tries, in vain, to talk to her one last time, but by now even the pain of the attempt has numbed. The finale has come, the curtain descended; all that remains is for him to retreat into the backstage shadows. The memory of his last great composition gives him some comfort. He has done all he can. It is enough.

Austria Edel hopes that is true.

_Al niente. _

~~0~~

Some notes about musical terms used in this chapter:

Staccato – an abrupt, disconnected series of notes

Sforzando – a very sudden, forceful note

Tempo – the speed of a piece of music

Crescendo – gradually growing louder

Fortepiano – a sudden change in volume, from very loud to very quiet

Decrescendo – gradually growing quieter

Al niente – to nothing; fade to silence

Also, the fact at the beginning is not just something I made up – it is widely believed that hearing is the last sense to go before one dies. Makes Katniss' lullaby to Rue in _The Hunger Games_ all the more meaningful, in my opinion.


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